Historic Documents on Absinthe

Here is an interesting collection of articles detailing the use—often depicted in absinthe advertising and art of the 1800s—of carafes containing large chunks of ice, frozen inside the carafe. Read about innovations in refrigeration and how these carafes were produced without breaking the glass.

This short story by southern American writer by W. C. Morrow—chilling for its time—was published in the collection, THE APE, THE IDIOT & OTHER PEOPLE, in 1897. The stories in the anthology were originally published in Lippincott's Magazine, Philadelphia, and the Overland Monthly, the Argonaut, the Examiner, the News Letter, and the Call, all of San Francisco.

An excerpt from a pamphlet published by the U.S. Brewer's Association, ‪A Solution of the Temperance Problem‬, ‪Proposed by the Government of Switzerland‬ references a late 19th century absinthe drinking club.

The humorous song Absinthe Frappé comes from the Broadway musical, It Happened In Nordland. A musical comedy in two acts with a prologue, it was set in the fictional towns Kronenberg and Elsa Bad in the equally fictional country of Nordland.

Here are excerpts from By the Absinthe Route, Chapter 10 of the entertaining and true account of Lewis R. Freeman's yachting expedition of the South Pacific, entitled In the Track of the Trades. These passages are interesting for their portrayal of absinthe drinking and the style of preparation in the far-flung French outpost of Tahiti in the post-ban days.

Results Of An Investigation Undertaken
By The Alcohol Commission Of Paris In
The Interest Of Public Health

The alcohol
commission of Paris recently made an important report to the academy of
medicine of the same city with reference to spirituous liquors, the
report having been prepared by Professor J. V. Laborde. The academy
of medicine has not as yet voted on the conclusions of the commission,
and in the end parliament will have to decide, but the conclusion
arrived at seem to necessitate the suppression of all liqueurs and
aperitifs.

This is the complete text of Food Inspection Decision 147, which effectively banned absinthe by declaring wormwood a deleterious food additive, a position which, as modern science has demonstrated, is unfounded in fact.